


So We Can Go Back and Play Pretend

by Scrawlers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 20:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17029443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: As a result of his father's ultimatum following the stun gun incident, Hirutani transfers to Domino High.





	So We Can Go Back and Play Pretend

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a couple years ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here.
> 
> For reference, this takes place after the two month time skip following chapter twelve in the manga, but probably just before the museum chapters. So, since we know that the museum chapters start on a Saturday/Sunday (they mention they’re off school the next day, Sunday, at the start of chapter 13), then we can say this fic takes place in the week preceeding—probably on the previous Monday, as a matter of fact. Additionally, the emergency bout of CPR (and Anzu helping to save Jounouchi’s life therefore) is a reference to another fic of mine, _The One You Call_ , though you don’t have to have read that fic to understand this one outside of that tiny detail.

There were at least a hundred better ways to spend summer vacation than in the hospital. Jounouchi knew, because he had counted during what he considered to be his “medical incarceration.”

It was for his own good, and Jounouchi knew he shouldn’t complain  _too_ much. Yuugi had visited him every single day, and Honda’s and Anzu’s visits had been pretty regular as well. His bosses had been understanding about his absence (though that may have been because he circumnavigated the truth about why he was in the hospital in the first place), and although he would admit to feeling a little bitter over the fact that his old man hadn’t visited him, he couldn’t deny that having a two month “vacation” away from his place had been somewhat nice. Of course, it would have been nicer had he  _not_ been in the _damn hospital_ , but Jounouchi supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers.

One of the worst parts about spending summer vacation in the hospital, though, was the fact that it meant that the first real day he got to spend with his friends also happened to be a school day. Jounouchi was always one of the first ones to school due to waking up obscenely early for his paper route (and he had to admit, eight weeks of forced rest had done wonders in healing the damage an emergency round of CPR had done to his ribs, as well as healing his electrical burns so that they were now nothing more than angry looking scars spattered across his skin), and he could always count on Yuugi, Anzu, and Honda to be more or less on time as well. So he still had  _some_ time to talk with them, but that didn’t make him feel any less disappointed when their teacher entered the room and started calling for everyone to take their seats.

“Ah, whatever, I’ll just pass you a note,” Jounouchi said, and Yuugi nodded back as Anzu gave them both a severe look.

“You’re supposed to be paying attention. You can save the rest of what you were saying for break!”

“I’ll forget by then,” Jounouchi said, and Anzu rolled her eyes. “’Sides, it’s not a big deal—”

“You’re going to get Yuugi in trouble, and how are you going to pass him a note, anyway? He sits three rows away from—”

“Mazaki-san, Jounouchi-kun! Take your seats!” their teacher said, and Anzu looked scandalized as she was included in the scolding that fell on the pair of them. Jounouchi, for his part, ducked his head to hide his grin as he slid into his chair. By now Anzu was one of the greatest people he knew and he’d be forever grateful to her for helping save his life, but he couldn’t help but still feel a little amused whenever he managed to get her goody-two-shoes into a bit of trouble.

But whatever good humor he felt at getting Anzu scolded right along with him evaporated when he looked up and saw the person standing next to the teacher at the front of the class—when he saw the pair of ice green eyes that were boring straight into his skull. _No,_ he thought, even as he saw a gloating smirk sent his way. There was no way. It  _couldn’t_ be—

“Before we get started,” the teacher said, as she put the chalk he had been using to quickly write a name on the blackboard, “I’d like you all to meet a new student who will be joining your class this term.”

“New student?”  
“I didn’t hear anything about that . . .”  
“He looks kind of scary . . .”  
“What a way to end summer break!”  
“Think he’ll want to join the racquetball club?”

The outbreak of stage whispering in the class was both immediate and unsurprising, and for the most part Jounouchi tuned his classmates out as he stared straight ahead, his fingers curled into a white-knuckled grip on his desktop. 

“All right, that’s enough, settle down!” their teacher said loudly, and as requested most of the chatter died down, though a few girls were still whispering amongst themselves in back. At the edge of his vision, Jounouchi saw the teacher turn toward his apparent new classmate. “If you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself?”

“Of course. My name is Hirutani Kimio. Thank you for accepting me into your class. I look forward to our time together.” The entire time he spoke, Hirutani’s eyes never left Jounouchi’s face.

“And we look forward to having you here,” the teacher said, and Jounouchi’s nails, short as they were, bit into his palms so sharply he wouldn’t be surprised if he drew blood. “We’re a bit crowded, but I’m sure there was . . . ah, yes, there we go. You take that empty seat there, behind Jounouchi-kun.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Jounouchi said under his breath, as Hirutani’s grin grew wider. 

“Teacher, Hirutani can have my seat,” Honda said. “I don’t mind switching—”

“So you and Jounouchi-kun can talk through all your lessons?” the teacher said dryly, and Honda didn’t respond as the class broke out in a chorus of snickering. “I don’t think so. You two are separated for a reason. Hirutani-kun, please take your seat.”

“Certainly, thank you,” Hirutani said, and Jounouchi had to swallow down a bit of bile that crept up his throat at the false, borderline saccharine note of politeness of Hirutani’s tone. As Hirutani started down the aisle that would lead him to his desk, Jounouchi finally broke eye contact, and opted for staring ahead at the blackboard instead. It was easier than looking at Hirutani, anyway—easier than trying to figure out how Hirutani was even there, or  _why_ he was there, or why he was wearing a true blue Domino High school uniform instead of the customary Rintama dark grey—

“Um, teacher?” Jounouchi looked over as Yuugi spoke up, and like Honda he stood from his seat as he did so. “Would it be all right if Itraded seats, but with Jounouchi-kun instead? I think I—”

“No,” Jounouchi said sharply, even before their teacher had a chance to answer. Yuugi looked over at him, a bit bewildered, and then frowned.

“But . . .” Yuugi glanced over at Hirutani, indicating him with his eyes alone, and Jounouchi shook his head in a little jerk.

“That’s not any better,” he said. “I’d even say it’s worse.”

“And I say we’re not playing musical chairs,” their teacher said, sounding exasperated. “You all have your seats, those seats have worked fine all year, and nobody is trading anybody, understand?”

“Yes, teacher,” Yuugi and Jounouchi said together. Yuugi’s tone was glum, while Jounouchi’s was resolute, but his determination to see the situation through cracked violently when he heard Hirutani chuckle behind him.

“Good boy,” Hirutani said softly.

“Now that we have that settled,” their teacher said, for Hirutani’s comment had been far too quiet for her to hear and she didn’t seem to notice Jounouchi grinding his teeth together, or the little jerk he gave as he restrained himself from turning around and clocking Hirutani in the jaw as he so badly wanted to, “let’s get started. Please open your textbooks to page 323. If you’ll remember, we were starting in on unit five . . .”

Jounouchi yanked his math textbook out of his bag and slammed it onto his desk, though since the rest of the class was pulling out their own text and notebooks (since they had been too distracted by Hirutani’s introduction to do so before), no one really noticed the unnecessary force he used. Math was one of Jounouchi’s better subjects, even if he still didn’t love it, and he was grateful that it was their first class of the day. At least this way it didn’t matter if he only half-paid attention; he would still be able to follow along easily enough, or at least bullshit an answer if he was too busy thinking about how he was going to handle the monster that his teacher had decided to seat right behind him for the rest of the term.

But while Jounouchi had counted on being distracted by Hirutani’s presence, what he hadn’t accounted for was Hirutani himself. Not three minutes into the lesson Hirutani began rhythmically kicking the back leg of Jounouchi’s desk. It wasn’t anything violent, or even noticeable to anyone else in the class. No, the teacher droned on about this or that function or equation, and the students around them took down notes (or at least pretended to even as they doodled or passed unrelated notes to each other instead). But each time Hirutani’s foot connected with the chair leg Jounouchi’s desk gave a little shake, and the persistent, steady beat was just noticeable enough to slice through Jounouchi’s attention every single time he tried to refocus on the lesson. The worst bit, Jounouchi thought, was that it wasn’t even stuck on the same rhythm; every time Jounouchi thought he was used to it, that he could start ignoring it, there was another quick kick against the chair leg, or else a very brief period of respite before the rhythm started again. There was just enough variation to tear Jounouchi’s attention back to the bastard seated behind him, preventing him from concentrating both on whatever the teacher was talking about, and on any plans he could enact so that he would have to interact with Hirutani only a very minimal amount throughout the rest of the school year. There was no way Hirutani could know what he was thinking about, Jounouchi thought, as the rhythm changed once again and Jounouchi took a deep breath through his nose to try and cool his temper against the staccato beat. But at the same time, it felt too perfectly timed to be anything but deliberate.

So caught up was he in feeling slowly building rage over the constant annoyance behind him that Jounouchi didn’t pay attention to either the progression of the lesson or the ticking clock. It was for this reason that he didn’t know that only ten minutes had passed before he hissed through his teeth, “Would you knock it off?”

“Knock what off?” Hirutani replied, in the same undertone Jounouchi was using. He knocked his foot against the desk leg again in two rapid taps before he let it fall back into a slower, steadier pace.

“That.”

“What?”

“ _Your foot_.” 

“What about my foot?”

Jounouchi clenched his teeth together so much it hurt a little, and squeezed his pencil so tightly he felt it bend a bit in his grip, as though threatening to snap. He could  _feel_ Hirutani’s silent gloating on the back of his neck, and to cap it off, the steady  _thud, thud, thud . . . thud thud_ against his desk leg didn’t stop.

Jounouchi lasted only four more minutes—and in his opinion, that was something to be proud of considering the fact that, by the time he finally whipped around and slammed his palm against Hirutani’s desk, he was well past his breaking point. 

“For the last goddamn time,” he snarled, and even as several nearby students jumped, Hirutani only blinked in surprise before he smirked at Jounouchi. “Knock it the hell—!”

“Jounouchi-kun!” their teacher snapped, and Jounouchi turned back again, scowling at the teacher as she glared back at him. “What is the matter with you? Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a lesson? And what makes you think language like that is appropriate?”

“Sorry, teach, but Hirutani is distracting me,” Jounouchi said shortly. The teacher gave him a skeptical look, and as she did, Hirutani saw fit to mutter:

“Well your ugly fucking hair is distracting me, so I think that makes us even.”

Jounouchi had heard enough biting criticism of his hair back in middle school (and even that one weekend at the end of June) to last him a lifetime, and so that one little comment was enough to make him look back to glower at Hirutani. 

“Oh, you think so, huh?” he demanded, and Hirutani raised his eyebrows over a challenging smirk. “Well, you wanna fucking go find out? Because I—”

“ _Enough_!” their teacher said, and Jounouchi saw Anzu put a hand against her forehead, cringing, as Yuugi and Honda exchanged unhappy looks. “I don’t know what is going on here, but I intend to sort it out. Hirutani-kun, Jounouchi-kun, outside  _now_.” The teacher pointed to the door as she spoke, but even as Jounouchi shoved up from his desk she added, “And by that I mean the  _hallway._  Don’t pretend to take my words literally, Jounouchi-kun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jounouchi said. He stalked to the door, his fists shoved into the pockets of his school jacket, but as he made it clear of the desks he felt a hand on his back a second before he was pushed forward an extra step. He whirled back, one fist raised, and Hirutani raised his hands in a placating gesture betrayed by his mocking leer.

“I tripped,” he said. “My bad.”

“Yeah,  _your bad_ ,” Jounouchi spat, but the teacher stepped around Hirutani’s broad frame to point toward the door again. 

“Boys, hallway. Now. I mean it. And you wait out there until I’m finished with the lesson and can come talk to you.”

Jounouchi gave Hirutani one last scathing look before he spun on the ball of his foot and stomped out of the classroom, and in his temper he slid the door back so roughly it slammed against the frame. Hirutani caught it easily as it bounced back, though he released it the second he was over the threshold, and let it slide closed again on its own. The moment they were both in the hallway with the doors shut, Jounouchi whipped back around to face him and demanded:

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Going to school,” Hirutani said, and he leaned back against the wall before he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter. “What does it look like?”

“You know what I meant. Why are you here and not at Rintama?” Jounouchi said. Hirutani flicked the lighter to spark a flame, and then released the wheel so the flame clicked out. He repeated this, each time in a steady, repeating rhythm similar to the one he had used against Jounouchi’s desk. “And put that away. You know we’re not actually allowed to smoke here, right?”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Hirutani said instead, and Jounouchi rolled his eyes. Hirutani didn’t move to put the lighter away, but at the very least he didn’t pull out a cigarette, either. “My old man wanted me to transfer.”

Jounouchi didn’t know what part of that small little sentence sounded like the bigger lie, but he supposed that when it came to Hirutani, having to unbox a suitcase worth of lies wasn’t anything new. “Here? Why? And since when do you give a damn what he wants?”

“I don’t, but this seemed like the least amount of hassle,” Hirutani said, and he flicked the lighter flame on again. “He decided he wanted to attempt to be a ‘disciplinarian’ after that little incident last June.” Hirutani snorted, and Jounouchi felt a renewed flash of rage course through him, even as Hirutani released the flame on his lighter. “Apparently confiscating the stun guns wasn’t enough in his eyes, and he decided he wanted me to transfer so I could ‘fall in with a better crowd.’”

“It’d be funny how stupid your old man is if it wasn’t so disgusting,” Jounouchi said. 

Hirutani shot him a smirk. “Wouldn’t it? Anyway, he gave me my pick of schools so long as I transferred to one of them, so I decided to come here to placate him. It doesn’t make much of a difference; I can still carry out my operations at Rintama from here. It’s just a little more inconvenient than it was before.” Hirutani shrugged. “But my old man will forget by the end of the year, so it isn’t as if I have to put up with this for long.”

“Thank god,” Jounouchi said. Hirutani clicked the lighter flame on again. “Why here?”

Hirutani heaved a suffering sigh. “I just got through explaining it to you. You know, Jounouchi, this is why we have problems: Because you never actually  _listen_ to what I—”

“No, you fucking asshole, I meant why  _here_?” Jounouchi interrupted, and Hirutani shot him a look of warning. He ignored it. “You had to transfer, fine, whatever. But you said your dad gave you a list of schools. Why this one?”

“Why do you think?” Hirutani asked, and as he had during his self-introduction, he didn’t remove his gaze from Jounouchi’s face. Any disgust that Jounouchi had felt at how oblivious and incompetent Hirutani’s father was paled in comparison to the revulsion that swept through him under that look. “Besides,” Hirutani continued, “where else should I have gone?  _Seigo_?”

Now it was Jounouchi’s turn to snort, and he turned away. “As if you could afford that rich bitch school,” he said. 

“I could find a way if I wanted to. I don’t,” Hirutani said.

For a few seconds the only sound was the steady  _click, click, click_ of Hirutani playing with the cigarette lighter, but that was all Jounouchi could take before he turned back again. He wasn’t surprised to see that Hirutani was still staring at him.

“What I don’t get,” he said, “is why you’re still . . . like this.” He gestured at Hirutani to try and illustrate his point, but it didn’t make it across; Hirutani merely raised an eyebrow in question. “Aren’t you fucking sick of me yet? Didn’t you get the picture last June? ‘Cause I sure as hell thought you did after you tried to  _murder_ me be—”

“I didn’t try to murder you,” Hirutani said, sounding annoyed, and Jounouchi gave him an incredulous look.

“Uh, excuse me? Then what do you call that little torture stunt with the stun guns? ‘Cause as I recall—”

“I call that my boys punishing and attempting to execute you on my orders,” Hirutani said, and Jounouchi was about to point out that, yes, that was exactly what he was talking about, before Hirutani said, “That isn’t the same as me trying to murder you. If I wanted to murder you, Jounouchi, I wouldn’t  _try_. You’d be dead.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. You still called for them to kill me, which is more or less the same thing in that you seemed to be pretty fucking done with me, so—”

“You pissed me off. I lost my temper,” Hirutani said, shrugging.

“You ‘lost your temper,’” Jounouchi repeated flatly, and Hirutani nodded once. “Yeah, okay. You know, most people don’t try to  _commit murder_ when they ‘lose their tempers’—”

“Most people don’t have to deal with you.”

“Right, because it’s  _my_ fault you’re a fucking psychopath—”

“It’s your fault you get punished. You know what I want you to do, you know what you’re  _supposed_ to do, and you know better than to mouth off and act like you did that day. If you’d just stop doing it and do as you’re told—”

“I’m not  _supposed_ to do anything but whatever the hell I want, and what I want is to stay the fuck away from you,” Jounouchi snapped, and Hirutani glowered at him, all traces of earlier amusement gone. “I don’t know how you missed this memo, Hirutani, but lemme spell it out for you again: We’re done. I’m done. Stay the fuck away from me, and stay the hell away from my friends.”

Somehow, that of all things was enough to bring Hirutani’s amusement back, and he laughed a little as he clicked the lighter again. “Your ‘friends,’” he said. “I don’t have any interest in them. They mean nothing to me.”

“Good,” Jounouchi said.

“But that just means I also don’t care what happens to them, if you get my meaning.” He looked up to meet Jounouchi’s eyes as he flicked the lighter on, released the flame, and then flicked it back again. “You know that what I said before still holds up, don’t you? I could still have them killed if I wanted.”

“Try it,” Jounouchi said,and his pulse pounded so heavily he could feel it throbbing in his ears. “Because I’m fucking sick of your shit. Do anything to  _any_ of them, so much as  _try_ , and I swear to god I’ll—”

“I won’t,” Hirutani said, “so long as you do what I say. It’s the same deal as before. Be a good boy and I’ll leave your little ‘friends’ alive. Disobey me, and . . .” Hirutani shrugged. “Well, it depends on where we are, what we’re doing . . . last time you pushed my buttons when you were the only one around, and in front of the boys, no less. That was bad luck on your part.”

“Really? Because I’m not the one daddy got mad at,” Jounouchi said.

Hirutani smirked. “That’s only because your old man is too hammered to remember your name half the time.” Though Jounouchi bit the inside of his cheek, he wouldn’t let himself have any more of a reaction than that. “But either way, I’m a patient man, Jounouchi. I won’t make you do anything right away. So long as you stay on your best behavior, I’ll let them be. For now, at least.”

“Oh lucky me,” Jounouchi said caustically. “Why the change of heart?”

“Well, we’ve got all semester, don’t we?” Hirutani’s lips curled into a smile. “That’s an entire semester I have to not only have easy tabs on you, but also . . .  _remind_ you of how things work. Now that we’re attending the same school, it’ll be easier than ever.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that worked real well for you back in middle school,” Jounouchi scoffed. “You had two whole years of junior high and you still couldn’t ‘teach’ me jack shit. You know that trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results is one of the first signs of insanity, right?”

Hirutani huffed a low, muted laugh. “It’s as I told you two months ago: Things are different now from how they were back then. I’ve learned, Jounouchi, and I have all the patience in the world with which to refine my technique.” His smirk grew wider, and his pale green eyes glinted with a hunger that made Jounouchi clench his fists against the uncomfortable shiver that worked its way down his spine at the look of them. “By the end of the semester, you’ll see things my way. That’s a promise.”

Jounouchi opened his mouth to snap that like hell he would, but before he could the door to the classroom opened again, and their teacher stepped out. Jounouchi could see that the rest of their classmates had split into groups behind her, no doubt to work on the assigned problem set until the end of class. Before he could see whether or not Yuugi, Honda, and Anzu had managed to group up together, their teacher shut the door to the classroom behind her, and turned to look at Jounouchi and Hirutani both with a harried, yet stern, look.

“I don’t know what got into the pair of you, and to be honest, I don’t really care what it was,” she said. “Gods know you teenagers find more things to quarrel about than a pair of stray alley cats. But what I do know is this: Class is a place for learning, and no one—including your classmates—can learn if you are squabbling and using vulgar language. It’s disruptive and wholly inappropriate. It’s  _especially_ inappropriate to pick a fight with someone not twenty minutes into his first day of class.” She aimed a pointed look at Jounouchi, who scowled back at her.

“You don’t know him like I do,” he said, and he shifted his glare to Hirutani, who was unable to keep the smug smirk off his face.

“I don’t care,” their teacher said. “What I do care about is making sure this doesn’t happen again. Both of you need to promise to save any fighting for an appropriate setting. Go ahead, do it now.”

Jounouchi heaved a sigh. “Fine. Yes, teach, I’ll fight him after school, off property, blah blah blah, whatever.”

“Likewise,” Hirutani said.

The disgruntled look on their teacher’s face told Jounouchi that she was less than fond of his less than sincere promise, but she nonetheless heaved a tired sigh. “Good,” she said. “Now shake hands so we can go back inside.”

“What?” Jounouchi demanded, aghast, as Hirutani barely stifled his own laughter. “No.”

Their teacher’s eyes hardened. “No arguments, Jounouchi-kun. Do it now.”

“Teach, there is no way in hell I’m shaking that bas—guy’s hand,” Jounouchi said. Their teacher’s face contorted in an irate glare, but before she could say anything, Hirutani cut her off.

“The faster you get it over with, the faster we can all continue on with our day,  _Jounouchi-kun_.”

The simpering tone he used was nearly enough to make Jounouchi vomit, and Jounouchi hoped that the withering look he shot Hirutani’s way conveyed that well enough. Unfortunately, their teacher didn’t seem to take the same issue with it that Jounouchi did.

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” she said, and gestured toward Hirutani to accentuate her point. “Now, I’m not going to say it again. Shake hands so we can go inside, or I can start filing a paper with the principal’s office to give you a week long asuspension for insubordination. It’s your choice.”

A week long suspension sounded preferable to shaking hands with Hirutani, but in all fairness, so did fighting a horde of tigers with both of his arms tied behind his back. All the same, Jounouchi might have taken it if it didn’t mean that he would hardly get to spend any time with Yuugi for the next week. Given that he had just spent the past two months in the hospital, and had only been able to see Yuugi during visitation hours during that time, Jounouchi wasn’t exactly keen on going yet another week where he barely got to see his best friend. So, clenching his jaw against the gorge that threatened to rise in his throat, Jounouchi stuck out his hand and shook Hirutani’s, his grip tight enough to at least bruise the bones in Hirutani’s hand (a favor Hirutani returned), and brief enough so that he would only have to use a small dollop of hand sanitizer once they were done.

“There, was that so hard?” their teacher asked, and Jounouchi bit back the retort of ‘yes’ that sat so readily on his tongue as she slid the door to the classroom open again. “Everyone has split into groups to work on the homework assignment. I trust you both to be able to find a group that only has three other students that you can join.”

“Yep, sounds good,” Jounouchi said. Now that the classroom door was open again, he saw that Yuugi, Honda, and Anzu had indeed formed their own group near the window, and he made a beeline for them without sparing Hirutani another glance. They looked up as he neared, all three of them looking visibly relieved (probably, Jounouchi thought, because they thought he was going to end up suspended), but even as they looked at him, Honda’s gaze didn’t linger. Instead, he looked over Jounouchi’s shoulder, frowning at what he saw. For his part, Jounouchi didn’t have to look back to know that Hirutani was watching him instead of choosing a homework group, but as he pulled a chair over to join Yuugi, Honda, and Anzu, he also told himself rather forcefully that he didn’t care.

Hirutani could do what he wanted. He could watch what he wanted, say what he wanted—whatever. It wouldn’t change anything, and eventually, even someone as doggedly aggravating as Hirutani had to get and understand the memo.

 _At least,_  Jounouchi thought, even as he could  _feel_ Hirutani looking at him from the other side of the classroom,  _he damn well better._


End file.
